


in this place

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Tales from the Shelterverse [11]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1309522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prequel, of sorts, to Shelter.  Another Fragment from a Love Story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this place

“They’re here again.”  Sebastian heard Sister Emmaline whispering to Sister Lorainne as he came down the stairs.  They always picked the dark corner of the landing on the rear staircase from the loft for their gossiping.  He should stop them.  They were getting terribly lax at their duties, but it was no longer his place.

 

“Who is?”

 

“The woman the Grand Cleric says used to be an Amell.  And her two girls, this time.”  They glanced up at Sebastian as he did his best not to hurry down the last flight.

 

Hawke had done him a great service with the mercenaries.  It was only polite of him to acknowledge her presence.

 

He leaned over the rail at the last landing to observe the shadowy worship floor.  The low buzz of prayer murmured under the ever-present Chant coming from the upper Loft.  There were several parishioners in the nave, a few by the foot of Andraste’s statue, lighting fresh candles and another couple speaking with Mother Claudie.  He spied Leandra Hawke kneeling on red carpet by the memorial wall, her gleaming silver hair tied neatly back, and her dark haired, shy daughter kneeling beside her with her head bent and hands clasped before her.  But Hawke, with her gleaming cap of mahogany hair, was nowhere to be seen.

 

Perhaps Emmaline had been mistaken.  But the woman, for her faults, could count.

 

He swallowed back a sigh.  He was too keen to see a person he’d no business being curious about.  It was perhaps better that he didn’t.

 

A Templar strode up the aisle drew Sebastian’s attention with the clank of plate, even muffled by carpet and stone.  A shift in the shadows that pooled near the base of the staircase behind the two Hawkes jerked his eyes back to the sudden appearance of a hooded figure in dark, rough leather.  Sebastian pushed away from the railing, wondering if the women were in some sort of trouble.

 

The person pushed the hood back, watching the Templar’s back as he trudged up the opposite stairs on his way to deliver a message to the Grand Cleric.  A gleam of torchlight caught sparks in short red hair.

 

Hawke.  He tamped down the slight bubble of eagerness before he trotted down the last few steps.

 

“Is all well, Mistress Hawke?”  Sebastian whispered in deference to the prayers of the faithful.

 

She nodded, still watching the armored back of the Templar as he disappeared onto the second floor.

 

He paused, observing her face.  Still and pale, as if she’d not been outside in the light much of late, eyes narrowed.  Nothing of the laughing, smirking rogue who’d come to tell him of her success with his commission with her companions in tow and then offered him both sympathy and gentle understanding.  It was, perhaps, easier to see the woman who might have killed the hardened men who’d slaughtered his family in this silent, menacing figure.  Much more like the glimpses he'd had of her before he knew her name.

 

There were shadows under her eyes and her cheekbones pressed sharply under the ivory skin, as if she’d not been eating properly.

 

It wasn’t his place to worry about her.   But…”I have prayed for you.  Since your service to my family.”

 

That drew her attention to him.  He thought she might snap, there was a spark of anger in her eyes.  But her voice was calm when she whispered, “Thank you.”  She returned her gaze to her family’s backs.

 

“I helped make…”  Sebastian bit off his words, mortified.  He’d been about to offer to take her back to the kitchen and feed her. “Do you not pray with your family?”   He asked instead.

 

“No.”

 

And there was a clear rebuff if he’d ever heard one.  “Ah.  Excuse my intrusion, then.  On your…watch.  I’ll get on with my duties.”   He bowed, stiffly, and retreated.  He felt her eyes on his back as he strode across the floor and as he closed the door to the scriptorium behind him and wondered if there was as much suspicion in the way she watched him as there had been for the Templar.

 

A week later, he spied Leandra and her younger daughter again, this time from his place in the choirloft.  He tried to keep himself from scrying the dark corners of the nave for the other Hawke, but he spied her just as the last notes of the Chant faded.  She shifted as she pushed back the hood and her gaze fell on him again.  She nodded in recognition, still blank faced but somehow less icy than she’d been the last time.  And when the corner of his mouth slid up in an involuntary smile the tautness of her features softened, just a touch.

 

They were gone, though, when he was able to gain the floor.

 

A few days after, he was startled to see them rushing into the Chantry.  They were fair soaked through, though Sebastian hadn’t realized it was raining.  He’d been down in the depth of the Chantry sorting through a crate of books that the Fereldan Chantry had sent last year for protection.  They’d recently requested their return, and Elthina had wanted a catalogue.  Hawke swept in behind the other two and she thanked the guardsman on patrol with a smirk as he helped her press the door closed against the wind.

 

He stepped into the alcove and brought out some linen towels that were kept there for such occasions.  “Guardian seems to have blown in with a vengeance.”

 

“It’s quite refreshing, really.  Thank you, Brother Sebastian.”  Hawke’s mother had a soft smile and sparking blue eyes.  She was a bit thin for her height and bone structure, but it was clear where the Hawke daughters got their beauty.

 

“Thank you, Brother Sebastian.”  Her sister had a warm voice and huge brown eyes that widened a little when he smiled at her.

 

He was startled to find Hawke watching him with a wry smile of her own when he looked her way, hood pushed back already.  She took the towel with a nod of thanks.

 

“Manners, Aeryn.”  Leandra spoke with an impatient note watching her daughter roughly scrubbing at her hair.

 

Hawke…Aeryn?...twitched an eyebrow up, the smoothly made-up face at odds with the spikes of hair sticking up.  A few of the longer strands were curling as they dried.   “Yes, of course.  Thank you.  Brother Vael.” There was a faint trace of Ferelden in her speech he’d never heard before, as if she trimmed it out when her family wasn’t about.

 

“Ah, we’ve met before.  Your daughter has been of aid to the Chantry and to myself, of late.”

 

“Has she?  That’s surprising.”  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hawke’s face go startlingly blank at her sister’s words but when he turned back to her, Hawke was smiling brilliantly.

 

“One does what one needs to do.”  She curtsied neatly.  “It looks quiet enough, today.  I’ll be talking to Fergus when you’re ready, ladies.  Excuse me.”  She handed him back the towel.

 

“Hawke…”  But she’d spun on her heel and wrenched the doors open, her slim figure disappearing into the mist sent up by cold, blowing rain.  Leandra was flushed as she took her daughter's arm, frowning as she excused them and whispering as they walked away.  Sebastian saw the girl step into the confessional before she left and was torn between approval of her contrition and worry that Hawke was still out in the weather as the wind howled around the bell tower.

……..

 

He accompanied the Grand Cleric on her trip to Cumberland, so it was nearly a month before he ran into the Hawkes again.  He’d done his best not to think of her, he’d no reason to do so.  But Sebastian found himself lingering on the shape of her name as they travelled.  And the way she’d been smiling at him, just for a second before some argument he wasn’t a part of had spoiled…ended it.  He’d prayed for her as often as she’d crossed her mind and mocked himself for it.

But she’d been gentle and kind to him, she’d listened to him…when everyone around him had been impatient with his grief.  He could count on one hand, the number of people who’d ever taken him so seriously.  That flash of compassion seemed at odds with the woman he’d encountered every other time.

 

When he noticed Bethany kneeling alone at the rail, he immediately headed towards the doors.  Hawke was leaning lazily against the wall, scanning the movement in Elthina’s loft above them.  “Good afternoon, Brother Vael.”

 

He swallowed back a pleased grin, but only barely.  “Mistress Hawke.  I am glad to see you.  Well, I mean….after...”

 

“I’m alright, thanks.”  Her lashes made dark halfcircles on her cheeks when she dipped a curtsey.  

 

“I am glad to hear it.”  Sebastian had no intention of forcing his company on her.  He turned to go.

 

“You’ve been away.”

 

Was that a question, it almost sounded like...?  But he managed to simply nod, “I attended the Grand Cleric on a trip.  To Cumberland.”

 

She nodded, too, then cocked her head, bird-like and curious.  “Was it so sun…I.  What’s it like?”

 

“Cumberland?”  He blinked at the unusually disorganized way she spoke.

 

Hawke hesitated before she nodded, as if she was questioning the wisdom of her curiosity.

 

Far more casually than he thought to manage, he settled back against the wall as well, a careful arm’s length away.  He kept his eyes on the impassive face of the Maker’s Bride.  To an observer, it might look as if he was only giving a lesson.  “It’s an impressive city, I’ll admit.  Huge.  I don’t believe we saw half of it and I never even saw the port, itself.”  He sighed to think of it.  Another coastal city, and he’d yet to see the ocean.  “The golden dome of the College is blinding in the noon light, nearly overwhelming.  I thought I’d actually been blinded that first afternoon.”  Sebastian couldn’t stop his chuckle at the memory; at feeling like a country lad gone up to the city despite his childhood in Starkhaven, unable to stop staring at the Nevarran sites.

 

Her arched brows were drawn together when he looked up “The College?”

 

“The College of th’ Magi?”

 

“Oh.”  She was silent and Sebastian wondered if their conversation was finished until, “I guess…I hadn’t thought you’d be…impressed by magic of any sort.” She tipped her delicate little chin up towards the Beloved.  

 

He ducked his head.  Sebastian had heard…had collected the information greedily and not confessed the greed at all... about Leandra Amell’s romance with a wild apostate.  Hawke’s father had been a mage, which likely explained her fierce dislike of Templars.   “I find the Maker’s gifts impressive, in all their forms.”  He said it quietly, glancing down to find her looking up at him with serious eyes.

 

“So long as they’re bent to the Chantry’s will?”  She spoke lightly, at odds with the direct, solemn gaze.

 

“Obedience isn’t an easy thing to learn to bear.”  He spoke to the serious eyes, not the lazy posture or the light voice.

 

“Neither is a chain around your neck.”  She looked forward again, towards her sister taking Mother Esme’s blessing.  Dark eyes closed and peace on her lovely face.  He could just see the corner of a crooked smile on Hawke’s painted lips.  He wondered if Hawke ever looked that peaceful or if she forever suited her expressions to whatever situation she found herself in.  

 

“It doesn’t have to be like…”  But she’d pushed herself away from the wall, pacing towards the door and he swallowed back the excuse and let lodge in his throat.

 

“Excuse me, Brother Vael.  I need to get my sister home before dark.  The streets aren’t safe once you cross the bridge.”

 

He watched her move, every line of her smooth and her steps sure.  He couldn’t help the half bow he made and when she sent him another corner of a smile before her sister caught up to them, he felt the bitter knot in his throat loosen.

 

Looking in the small shaving mirror the next morning, he could see the traces of the sunburn he’d gotten that first long afternoon of the trip, when he’d chosen to walk.  A few small freckles that had faded in his years at the Chantry had popped up again around his eyes and he brushed them with the tips of his fingers.  She’d noticed them.

 

It was another two weeks before he saw her…the Hawkes…again.  But he was up in the choir loft preparing to sing.  He saw her chin lift, bright eyes glancing around.  Looking for him?

 

He sang with as much heart as he ever had, not to her, of course.  But Trials was beautiful, one of the favorites of most Andrastians.  Still, Hawke drew her hood back around her face as the second verse began, slumping back into shadows and out of his view.

 

Lirene was known to the Chantry and they aided the mission to support the Fereldan refugees as much as they could without drawing the ire of Hightown nobility.  The next morning was his turn to carry a portion of the week’s tithe to the Lowtown shop.  It was an easy walk over the bridge, but he took his bow and wore the armor again, as he had to accompany Elthina to Cumberland.  It settled easily this time, starting to feel less strange after ten years of robes.  He still wasn’t used to the way eyes skittered away from him, though, as a crowd in the small market parted before him and an elvhen boy backed away to hide behind the shattered boards of an abandoned stall.  He’d been more approachable in his Chantry garb but only a fool would walk in Lowtown with no armor.

 

At least it sounded a good excuse.  He looked around at the bustling shoppers, women with baskets, men with bags slung across their backs.  Tired faces, pinched mouths.  A hum of voices and the occasional shout from a disgruntled customer.  He didn’t likely have anything to worry about.  He shifted the bow across his back again and turned the corner to Lirene’s shop.

 

Only to plow hard into the back of Aeryn Hawke.  Laughing, smirking Hawke, walking backwards in the middle of some jest with the pale haired elvhen man he’d seen her with before.  He caught her tense shoulders as she spun around, a blade in hand and saw as her narrowed kohl-lined eyes widened comically and the painted, lush stop that mouth dropped open just for a moment in surprise.

 

“Brother Sebastian? What brings you to Lowtown?”  He dropped his hands to look up at Hawke’s sister, the large pikestaff strapped across her shoulders casting a slightly different view of her.  A dwarf in a striking leather coat and toting a huge crossbow completed her crew.

 

“I…” He clenched his fists, trying to push away the urge to close his fingers again around the taut, leashed strength in Ae...Hawke’s shoulders.  “I have business.  At Lirene’s.”  He tipped his head towards the shop.  “Mistress Hawke...I’m so…”

“Should have watched where I was going, messere.  Don’t worry yourself.”  One small gloved hand brushed at the leather on her shoulder as if she were straightening ruffled feathers.  

 

“Mistress?  You moving up in the world without us, Hawke?”  The dwarf had a smirk to match hers and she snorted a laugh.

 

“I’d never leave you behind, Varric.  Maker knows what you’d say about me if I wasn’t in blade’s reach.”  The dwarf spread his hands wide and shrugged and even the dour looking elf coughed a laugh at his disingenuous expression.  Sebastian found himself looking down at his feet, cut out of the comradely moment.  Hawke’s boots were well polished...though the sole looked thin and worn and there was a patch across the toe.

 

“We’ll let you get on with your task, Brother Vael.  We need to get up the mountain.”  Hawke dropped a curtsey, dragging her patched boot behind her as if she was ashamed of it and her hands flicked out theatrically but only he could see the curiosity in her eyes, soft as a grey sky instead of sharp.  

 

Glancing around, they were all wearing sturdy boots except for the elf and carrying heavy packs.  “Up...To Sundermount?”  The mountain loomed, purple in the distance beyond the city.  He’d heard *stories* about the mountain, the treacherous coastal road, and the wild Dalish and other dangerous fauna to be found there.  

 

“We’ve tasks to accomplish ourselves.  No rest for the wicked, you know.”  She shrugged.

 

“It sounds...quite the adventure.  Be...I’ll pray for you..all.”  He winced inwardly, expecting to be snapped at even as Bethany Hawke smiled her thanks and the others walked away.  

 

But there it was again, the little curve of a smile at the corner of Hawke’s mouth.  “My thanks.  They’ll need it, like as not.”  She turned back, before she followed her crew off.  “You need to be on your way before dark...Brother Vael.  You’ll draw attention, once the sun starts to sink.”

 

Sebastian.  “I...I will be, yes.  Thank you.  Maker guide you, Hawke”   

 

She nodded.  And the ends of her fingers lifted in a slight wave as she swayed off.

 

 He wasn’t watching her walk away.  But he couldn’t help but hear.

 

“He’ll draw attention?  Hawke, that boy would draw attention at the bottom of a well.  You know who he is, right?”

 

“Hush, Varric.  Yeah, I know.  We did in those mercs for him, remember?”  She cut the dwarf off as if she didn’t want Sebastian to hear her friends gossiping.    

 

Varric...Varric Tethras?  What company she kept.  Though...better than the Carta, one had to suppose. Hawke...she looked.  Sebastian considered...she looked healthier, better rested, better fed than she had when he’d first begun to see them in the Chantry.  Well over a year now.  

 

…..

 

“I didn’t realize your sister worked with you.”  The Chant had been sung, the Hawkes coming in about halfway through.  She was waiting for her mother to finish a longer than usual prayer.  

 

He didn’t know what he’d said, but that wary sharp look had come into her eyes again even as she curved him a smile.  “Well, looks are deceptive.  Bethany’s quite skilled.  Stronger than she might seem.”

 

“I’m sure.  It’s just...you’re very careful with her.”

 

“She doesn’t come often.  Mother prefers to keep her youngest close.  But she needs the fresh air, too.  When we go out of the city, I always try to bring her along.  She misses the freedom...Fereldan was different.”  

 

“I imagine.  Were you from one of the cities?”  Ferelden had cities, he knew.  Not the elegant, stonewrought places of Northern Thedas, but larger towns and the seat in Denerim.  The Hawke ladies were elegant, for all their poverty.  Surely…

 

“Just a farm kid.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Don’t look so surprised, Brother Vael.  Mother was a fine teacher.”  She shot him an amused glance and he couldn’t help the flush that spread along his cheekbones.

 

He dreamed of her that night in a long, silken gown.  Trailing down the stairs of one of the Hightown estates.  He dreamed long enough to pick up her hand, the slim little fingers warm in his.  The livewire strength of her, curved against his arm as he escorted her down to the floor.  He woke up with a start.  There’d been a weight on his forehead.  Like a crown.

  
  


He chose to fast the following day, spending the better part of his morning in meditative prayer.  No amount of confession would clear his conscience, if he wasn’t resolved in spirit.

 

A week passed and the resolution came clearer.  It needed to be done with.  Hawke was...somehow, though she had never made any effort...she had broken the bolt and rattled the bars of his self-imposed cage.   No...that wasn’t fair.  Not a cage.  

 

When had he come to think that?

 

Sebastian had every intention of avoiding another conversation with Hawke.  But she didn’t come.  Twice in the middle of the day, he saw their mother, neatly dressed as if she’d been visiting.  But never Hawke nor her sister.

 

When she finally appeared, three weeks into Guardian in an early evening escort, he barely managed to finish replenishing the incense infused fatwood in the eternal flame before he turned towards her.

 

The dark shadows were back under her eyes, but it might have been a trick of the light as she was pressed far back into the corner.  There was a dark red scar jagged across her cheek, looking as if it had happened a month ago rather than since the last time he’d seen her.  He frowned inwardly, stopping just before he got to the last landing.  Only magical healing could do that.  He paused and started to back away.  

 

Her head came up, the sharp gaze catching his movement.  Something of resignation fluttered across her face before it cleared, and she looked away, mouth firm and resolute.

 

As if she’d expected no more of him.

 

“You look tired, Hawke.”

 

It was a quiet moment, the whisper of prayers and the hiss of flames between them before she answered softly.  “Had a few late night jobs.”  

 

“You seem to work very hard to take care of your family.”  She shrugged a nonchalant shoulder.  “I’ve heard...there is talk you are trying to repurchase your family’s estate.”  When one neatly arched eyebrow begged the question, he added.  “The Amells returning is something of a hot topic among the ladies who visit the late service.”  

 

“Is there?  Well, Mother hasn’t been very quiet about it.  Yes.”

 

“So you’ll be Lady Amell?”

 

“No.  My name is Hawke.”  

 

“I see.”   He didn’t.  From the corner of his eye, he could see her press away a stressline between her eyes with her thumb.  Almost everyone who visited the Chantry left with a better sense of peace than they’d come with.   But never Hawke.  Peace seemed to be beyond her but he would not add to the burden.  “Perhaps.”  He bit off the question, rubbing the back of his neck.  Not his place.  He would not lie to himself, that he was only concerned as a counselor.  But he had made vows...vows he had meant.  

 

She answered what he didn’t ask, anyway.  "No.  I can't.  Too close now to..." she stopped herself, smoothing out her features and cutting him out from whatever she’d been about to confess.  “I have a duty, Brother Vael. I’ve made vows, myself.”  As if she’d read his mind.

 

And perhaps that was all that needed to be said.  “Then I will pray for your success.”

 

She took a breath, next to him.  As if steeling herself for something difficult.  “I know you’re required to pray for your parishioners.   I’m not...you don’t have to…”

“Not because I have to.”  He made his own confession.  Quietly, with his eyes fixed on Andraste.

 

He could feel the way she went still beside him, despite the fact that she was well over an arm’s length away.  “I cannot, for the life of me, puzzle you out.”

 

“Well, then, that’s the two of us.”  He caught the barest edge of a chuckle but when he went to look at her, share the smile, there was only the warm stretch of the wall’s stone beside him and Hawke was gone.  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
